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  1. #1
    ♥ms.pacman♥ is offline Red Diamond level (10,000+ posts)
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    Default 1 nap schedule = bliss!

    all i can say is, now that we are finally consistently on a 1-nap a day schedule, DS's sleep & napping (and his behavior in general) has greatly improved. he goes down to sleep around 8:30pm..wakes up around 9am babbling happily and stays quietly in his crib for another halfhour at least (often it's past 10am when i go to get him out). then around 1pm i usually put him down for his nap..depending on how tired he is he will sometimes play quietly in his crib for up to 1.5 hours before falling asleep. then he wakes up and just lounges around in his crib for a while...sometimes up to an hour! for his nap usually he is in his crib for a good 3 hours, even if he only is actually sleeping for 1.5 of those hours. it is downright awesome, and a sharp contrast to his sleep patterns of the months prior when he was on the 2nap schedule.

    i think earlier in the year i posted in the lounge or BP complaining about DS's napping issues..i just remember being preggo and dealing with morning sickness and the overall exhaustion of everything and being so frustrated that DS would sometimes only sleep for 30 minutes at a time, and of top of that, would wake up cranky. I think towards the end, by the the time DD was born, it would get to the point that DS would nap in the morning for 30-60 min, then i would try to get him to take an afternoon nap but by the time he was tired enough to fall asleep it would be past 5pm. what sucked about that was that then by 6:30pm or so (dinner time) he'd still be asleep, and we would have to go wake him up, and of course he would be pissed. or, even if he woke up on his own, he would wake up super cranky. and then since he slept so late he would go to bed late, screwing up his schedule. on other days, he would skip a nap entirely, but the timing was so unpredictable, making it hard to plan outings and such.

    i was initially reluctant to transition to the 1nap schedule because i didn't see how i could make it past noon with a toddler and a newborn without wanting to collapse myself. but after we eventually did it (and the transition took a few weeks or so before it was pretty consistent) it was soo worth it. now my DS actually sleeps in a ton, naps pretty well and doesn't wake up cranky. it's insane how different it is. anyway, just wanted to put my story out there for others who might be going thru something similar...

    oh, and i wanted to add, another great sleep decision...letting DS keep his crib.We had initially planned to transition DS into a toddler bed so DD could have his crib. At the last minute we decided to let DS keep his crib in his room and get a 2nd crib for DD. Hands down, the best money ever spent. Sooooo grateful for all the other BBB'ers for helping me see the light on this one. Am ever so thankful we decided to keep DS in his crib, especially now that DS is sleeping/napping so well and I have DD to take care too. I think I would have gone insane a thousand times over if DS was not in a crib when DD came home from the hospital. For others who are considering transition a young toddler to a bed for when baby #2 arrives, DON'T DO IT! i kept my sanity after DD arrived counting on the fact that DS was STTN, safely contained in his crib. He had more than enough major transitions to deal with when DD arrived, another big one would have been too much. I think DS will be in his crib until he goes to college.

  2. #2
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    Default

    Thanks for sharing! I would have never considered moving DS to one nap at such a young age...but I will keep it in mind for the future, if we have issues with the morning nap.
    Beaming mom to DS born 10/20/2010.
    The Force is strong with this one.

  3. #3
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    DD moved to one nap at nine months old and I loved it!!! Glad you've found the joy as well
    mom to one sweet little girl born in late '08
    and -surprise!- one sweet little boy born in late '11

  4. #4
    rin is offline Emerald level (3000+ posts)
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    Amen to that! We transitioned our now 13-month-old DD to a one nap/day schedule when she was about 12 months, and for us it's also been a dream! She was the world's worst napper when she was on a two (or even three) nap/day schedule, but ever since moving to the one nap/day schedule it's been awesome. I also was super reluctant and a lot of people said that most kids her age need two naps a day and warned that her sleeping would get worse overall if she was overtired . . . I'm glad I did try the one nap thing because it's been lovely. She takes her one nap, almost always goes down without a fuss, sleeps for 1.5-3 hours and plays quietly in her crib if she's not tired right away, and almost always goes down for bed at night without a fuss. Contrast this all to a few months ago when nearly every nap and bedtime involved almost an hour of fussing, rocking, singing, etc . . .

    Some kids just don't need as much sleep, I guess!

  5. #5
    ♥ms.pacman♥ is offline Red Diamond level (10,000+ posts)
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    wow, cool i'm not the only one! and yeah, most parenting mags/sites seem to be suggesting to wait to 18 months to transition to 1 nap..but we started it around 15mos bc he seemed more than ready, with is naps getting shorter and shorter. if i had known how much better it made his napping i probably would have done it sooner!

  6. #6
    hellokitty is offline Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    I'm glad you figured something out that works. DS3 has been a horrible napper from the very beginning (but decent night sleeper, so I felt I couldn't complain). He basically went from zero to one nap when he was a yr old. For the entire first yr, I could NOT get that kid to reliably nap, it drove me nuts. DS1 and DS2 had no such nap issues. The sad part is that I forsee DS3 dropping his nap probably by next yr.
    Mom to 3 LEGO Maniacs

  7. #7
    KrystalS is offline Sapphire level (2000+ posts)
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    I can't even express how ready I am for the one nap a day! DS is a horrible sleeper all around. For naps and at night time. We are still co-sleeping, not because we want to but out of total exhaustion. I tried for a couple days to put DS in his bed but he was moving around constantly in the crib, which woke me up because of the baby monitor. In the crib he was waking up at least 3 times. In our bed he only wakes up once.

    I really really hope that once DS transitions to one nap a day that he will become a better sleeper. Right now he takes a nap from 9-11, which means I can't run any errands in the morning. He takes another nap around 1 and depending on how long he sleeps he sometimes needs another nap around 430. I've tried moving his bed time but that didn't help at all, really made things worse.

    Plus now that DD is almost out for summer it is really going to make things difficult. I don't know how we will do anything fun around DS's nap schedule. How do those of you with older DCs and infants do it?!?
    -Krystal

    DD 2/04
    DS 10/5/10

  8. #8
    PGTB is offline Gold level (500+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by Krystal_Stores View Post
    I can't even express how ready I am for the one nap a day! DS is a horrible sleeper all around. For naps and at night time. We are still co-sleeping, not because we want to but out of total exhaustion. I tried for a couple days to put DS in his bed but he was moving around constantly in the crib, which woke me up because of the baby monitor. In the crib he was waking up at least 3 times. In our bed he only wakes up once.

    I really really hope that once DS transitions to one nap a day that he will become a better sleeper. Right now he takes a nap from 9-11, which means I can't run any errands in the morning. He takes another nap around 1 and depending on how long he sleeps he sometimes needs another nap around 430. I've tried moving his bed time but that didn't help at all, really made things worse.

    Plus now that DD is almost out for summer it is really going to make things difficult. I don't know how we will do anything fun around DS's nap schedule. How do those of you with older DCs and infants do it?!?
    Same here!

    DS has similar sleeping patterns and we are co-sleeping to be able to get any sleep ourselves, except DS is already 13 months old! He has always been a terrible sleeper. He still needs 2 naps, I can tell it is very difficult for him to have only one nap, he gets too tired at night time and would not eat a good dinner and that's a no-no, since he is underweight. I am hoping that when he is ready for 1 nap things would finally look on the bright side for us and DS would maybe sleep through the night?

    The napping for him requires either me nursing him to sleep (he would actually wait for that) or he has to be in the stroller or in my nanny's arms getting rocked to sleep - still at the age of 13 months. The kid would not go to sleep by himself because we didn't want to stick with CIO.

    Question to the OP - was your DS already sleep trained and in his room before transitioning to one nap? Or did he have sleep issues prior to this and one nap schedule is what really fixed it?
    DS 04/2010
    DD 09/2013

  9. #9
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    Default Thanks for the posting

    Thanks for posting this about transitioning from 2 naps to 1. My son is 13 months old and is a great morning napper but only takes about 50% of his afternoon naps. We are going to transition him to 1 nap this week. Thanks for the encouragement.

  10. #10
    citymama is offline Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    Sounds like an angelic baby! So accommodating.

    Dd2 has transitioned to 1 nap and we love it, although she wakes up at 7, and can't stay up past 11 am for that nap. She sleeps around 11-1.30, which means she is wiped out by 7 pm (we don't get her to bed till past 8 on most nights though). I'd love to get her to do 12-3 instead, or 1-4, so we can go out and do stuff in the mornings.

    for Sandy Hook



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